If you knew a major storm or fire was barreling toward your home, what would you save? Your pet? A box of letters? The blanket grandma knitted that you’ve been pretending to like for decades? A pop-up exhibit on the National Mall, brought to you by the Climate Action Campaign and curated by Sam Hartman - artist and survivor of Hurricane Helene - is asking visitors that very question. Housed in a shipping container-sized space at Constitution Gardens, the “Museum of Unnatural Disasters” collects artifacts and stories from extreme weather survivors across the country, plopping them right in the political heart of the nation, because nothing says “we’re in trouble” quite like a tiny museum in D.C.
“You can look at anyone’s face and you’ll never know what storm they have weathered, but you can look at an artifact from their house and you’ll immediately see what happened to it,” Hartman remarked in a promotional video, presumably while holding up a melted toaster or a rain-soaked teddy bear. The exhibit features roundtable discussions with climate experts, members of Congress, and disaster survivors to chew over the economic pain of extreme weather and what, if anything, can be done to protect people moving forward.
Kimberly Wills, director of strategic partnerships for the Climate Action Campaign, explained that the group hopes these shared experiences will jolt people into demanding action from their leaders. “We are doing a lot of work to call on our leaders in Congress to do more, to tackle the climate crisis,” she said. “We know so many people understand that climate change is real and it’s happening through the frame of extreme weather, because they can see it.” Because nothing drives a point home like seeing your neighbor’s roof in a tree.
A U.S. map of extreme weather events from the last two years that caused over $1 million in damages hangs on one wall, accompanied by news headlines that probably weren’t fun to read. Next to it sits a rectangular glass display case featuring broken household utensils and asthma inhalers - because nothing says “climate crisis” like a cracked spatula and a rescue inhaler. A small table holds handheld fans and pamphlets from the coalition. Wills noted that the people whose artifacts and stories are shown “could be any of us,” which is either deeply comforting or profoundly unsettling, depending on your flood insurance status.
While the U.S. is bracing for a relatively tame Atlantic hurricane season, conditions out West - thanks to widespread drought and light snowpack in mountainous areas - have wildfire experts especially twitchy about this year’s fire season. During the first scheduled discussion, held in a tent beside the main exhibit, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) warned about the dangers of inaction. “You see in New Mexico, they don’t have snowpacks, there’s going to be water consequences, we’re not building the infrastructure,” she said. “People say, ‘Well, you know heat,’ I’m like, ‘I do, but I don’t know heat 117 degrees in the second week of June. We shouldn’t be right in triple digits in May.’” She noted that high school graduations, historically an outdoor affair, are now up for debate.
The roundtable also featured Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and Hannah Safford, associate director at the Federation of American Scientists. “Heat is inescapable and visceral,” Safford asserted, probably while fanning herself. Deidre Radford, a Nevada resident on the panel, described her personal consequences: “To me, what that translates to is a lot more asthma and allergies, and that creates infection. I’ve been battling infection after infection after infection that stem from high heat and worsened air quality. This affects elderly people, it affects children, and it’s a constant battle for me.”
Titus lamented that heat doesn’t make as “good TV” as floods, hurricanes, or tornadoes. “I can tell you that heat is still the stepchild of natural disasters,” she said. “Any time you try to argue that with my colleagues, in the language of legislation or regulation, you have to put extreme heat and extreme cold to get their support. You can’t just talk about heat because they just don’t get it.” Apparently, heat needs a better PR agent.
Syl Foisy, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric science at Columbia University, had just completed a 12-day march on foot from New York to Washington D.C. in support of climate funding. He and two other researchers/science communicators stopped by the exhibit before dropping petitions at the Capitol to stop the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They wore shirts with the logo of the Weather & Climate Livestream - a 50-hour-long meteorological marathon that took place June 1-3. “All of us face the weather, we face disasters,” Foisy said. “We get a warning on our phone that tells us to stay out of it; that saves lives. I think being here is a great example of communicating to folks that these forecasts are not only helpful, but the forecasts are important because the storms are getting more intense, the extreme events are getting more extreme because of what we know from studying the Earth.”
The Museum of Unnatural Disasters at Constitution Gardens is open daily through June 14. Admission is free, which is more than you can say for the artifacts on display.